How to Create a WordPress Website with AI and Stay in Control

This is where everything that came before joins together

You have reached the step that gives the method its name. And you arrive with all the complementary knowledge you need.

The technical foundations are in place, your global styles are defined and you know how to recognise a block, select it and change it in the WordPress block editor.

None of that was filler. It was exactly what you needed to supervise what comes next. In this method, artificial intelligence does not replace the WordPress editor. We will ask it to build with native WordPress blocks so that you can continue editing the result in a few clicks without touching code.

Before you begin: put your website in “coming soon” mode

You are going to build directly on your website and, for a few days, it will contain test copy and misplaced elements. You do not want visitors to see it during that time.

“Coming soon” mode, called Maintenance mode at Hostinger, displays a waiting page to visitors while you continue working normally in the administration area.

You can activate it in two ways from Hostinger: manually or by asking the Hostinger assistant to do it. We will see how to ask the assistant, then how to check the result.

Log in to Hostinger

• Log in to your Hostinger.com account.
• On the right-hand side of the top bar, find Agent and select it.
• The chat panel opens. Simply ask it to put your website into maintenance mode.
• When it confirms that the operation is complete, verify it in Hostinger by following the route below.
• Select Websites, find your chosen domain, open Tools, then select File Manager.
• A new panel opens with the WordPress option. Select it and, under Overview, check that Maintenance mode is active. This confirms that the Hostinger agent completed the work.
• You can also open a private browsing window and enter your URL. A “Coming soon” screen like the one shown here should appear.

Remember the setting you saw during the initial configuration: the box under Settings → Reading labelled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” remains selected while you build. That setting is independent of “coming soon” mode. On publication day, you will have to disable both separately. We will remind you in the final step.

Choose the artificial intelligence you will use to build your website

At Scale & Own, we use Claude Code by Anthropic.

It is not the only option, but two requirements are non-negotiable.

The artificial intelligence you work with must:

Be able to work with code

Writing well is not enough. It must generate WordPress block markup and understand what it writes.

Be able to connect to your hosting

This is what allows it to work directly on your website, as we are going to do here.

OpenAI’s Codex CLI is another option that meets both requirements.

This technology is developing quickly, and new options will probably appear in the coming months. If you choose another one, check these two requirements before beginning. The rest of the method works in the same way.

Before continuing, you need to install Claude Code on your computer. It is a program you install once and then use to talk to the artificial intelligence.

Connect artificial intelligence to your website

The plan you purchased in the first step on web hosting includes SSH access. This is what makes the rest possible: artificial intelligence works directly on your website.

You describe what you want, it builds the page in your WordPress website and you check the result.

Activate SSH access

• Log in to hPanel and open Websites.
• Select Manage website.
• In the side menu, open Advanced → SSH Access.
• Turn on the SSH status switch.
• Make a note of the SSH information: the IP address, port and user. Paste it into the Claude Code conversation.

You do not need the password displayed there. Do not copy and paste it anywhere.

Claude Code will give you an access key. Copy it, then paste it into the Add SSH key option on the same page where you obtained the connection details.

After pasting the key, give it a name and select Add record.

As soon as the record is added, a message appears in your AI conversation confirming the connection to your website.

The test that confirms everything works

Even if AI has confirmed the connection, ask it a question to verify that it is reading your website correctly. We recommend asking:

Read my website’s current configuration and tell me which theme is active, which colours are in the palette and which typefaces are configured.

If the connection works, it will reply with the name of the theme, the eight colours in your palette and the two typefaces you chose in the previous step.

This test has a second purpose: compare its answer with the settings you configured. If it returns your colours, two things are confirmed at once: the connection is active and artificial intelligence is reading your real configuration rather than inventing an answer.

If the information does not match, do not continue. The problem almost always has one of three causes:

• You connected to a different website, if your hosting account contains several.
• You did not save the changes in Styles.
• You are viewing a cached copy. Clear the website cache and ask the question again.

Before you create your website with AI: do you know what you want?

Before writing the instruction document, take some time to explore how you would like your website to look. Most people do not know what they like until they see it.

Before writing, therefore, spend some time looking at examples. Then cite those references in the document and explain what you like and dislike about each one.

If you do not know where to begin

Some websites collect real websites for you to browse and use as inspiration for your own project:

Land-book

land-book.com

Pages from real businesses, organised by sector and style. It is the closest resource to what you are going to build.

One Page Love

onepagelove.com

Websites made up of a single page. Their simple structures are easy to reproduce with blocks.

SiteInspire

siteinspire.com

You can filter examples by website type, style and sector. This is especially useful for seeing how a service website is constructed.

Lapa Ninja

lapa.ninja

Landing pages organised by category, with palettes and typefaces already paired.

A reference is not a copy. You can borrow an idea, such as the use of space, restraint or margins, but you must not reproduce the design or copy literally. Copying someone else’s website leaves you with their website and nothing that is truly yours.

The instruction document for creating your website with AI

This is the heart of this page.

The instruction document is a text file in which you describe your website before it exists: the activity, its appearance, its pages and how the work must be carried out. You give the entire document to artificial intelligence at the beginning, and it consults it throughout the build.

It is not a chat message. It is a permanent document that AI returns to whenever it needs it. In Claude Code, it is saved as CLAUDE.md in your project folder and loads automatically whenever you work in that folder. You do not have to repeat the instructions in every session.

The quality of your website will depend on the quality of this document. There is no shortcut. If you simply tell artificial intelligence to “create a nice website for my business”, it will return a generic website because your instruction is itself generic.

The document does not need to be long. It needs to be precise. It has two very different parts:

• Seven modules that you complete yourself, because you are the only person who knows their content.
• One appendix that is identical for every website, which you copy without changing it and which ensures that your website remains editable from the dashboard without touching code.

Knowing the difference between these two parts saves you half the work. The part that looks most technical is precisely the part you do not have to think about.

The seven modules in the instruction document

• The business activity: what your business does, in one sentence a customer can understand.
• The tone: choose one, such as restrained, approachable, technical, direct or warm.
• Exclusion line: one sentence explaining what this website is not, or which audience it is not for.

List the pages and state their hierarchy. For each one, list the sections in order, with one sentence explaining the function of each section.

Example for the home page:

• Hero: what you do and for whom, with a button leading to Contact.
• Services: the three main services, presented in cards.
• Testimonials: two client reviews.
• About: a short introduction with a photo and a link to the full page.
• Closing section: an invitation to contact you or a form.

Limit yourself to one sentence per section. The aim is to define its function, not to write its content yet.

If you are creating a simple service website, you can start with Home, Services, About and Contact. Later, in the SEO step, the Exaldia platform can help you define this structure from real searches and user intent.

Turn your website structure into a connected SEO strategy.

Exaldia brings together website architecture, keyword research, content planning and SEO automation to help you turn your ideas into a clear working plan.

• Silo architecture
• Keyword research
• Content planning
• Automation

Explore Exaldia

Designed to organise, create and optimise content from one place.

• Who writes the copy: you, AI or a combination of both. If you use Exaldia, the platform can also help you draft it from the SEO structure.
• Exact data: list everything that must be exact, such as prices, timescales, dates, addresses, titles and qualifications. Add the source for each item. Anything without a source is flagged, and the relevant page is not published until it has been verified.
• SEO title and description: these will be worked on later, in the SEO step. They are not needed here.
• Images: place them in a clearly identified folder within your project and tell AI where it can find them. Give each one a name that describes its content, such as workshop-team.jpg rather than IMG_4821.jpg. AI will then be able to recognise and position them correctly. If you do not have your own photographs and do not want to use stock images, say so. It can then build those sections without photographs, using a coloured background, a large heading or an illustration.

List everything that is not simple text or a static image: forms, WhatsApp, maps, calculators, a blog, an online shop, a multilingual website and so on.

Write these functions down even if they seem obvious. Forms, analytics tools or online selling can add technical requirements and legal obligations depending on the data collected, the services used and the legislation that applies to your project.

Without this list, AI fills the gaps itself. When it does, it may add visual choices that do not match what you are looking for.

Here is an example exclusion list:

• Image carousels.
• Colour gradients.
• More than two typefaces.
• Icons using colours that are not in my palette.
• Generic filler copy: “innovative solutions”, “your strategic partner”, “we take your business to the next level”.
• A generic template appearance: rows of three icons labelled “fast, secure, easy”, fake logos in a “trusted by” section, or sections that provide no real information.

Writing this list from the beginning reduces later corrections.

This module describes how AI must behave while building your website.

These are rules of conduct, not design rules. They do not describe how a page looks. They describe what AI must do when data is missing, when it must stop and ask a question, and which actions it cannot take without your authorisation.

There are three. Copy them without changing them. If you add one, tie it to a specific situation.

• Rule 1: do not invent data. If a price, timescale, address, name, title or any other item that must be exact is missing, AI does not replace it with a plausible value. It leaves a visible marker in the copy, such as [TO VERIFY: price of service X], adds it to a list of outstanding points and asks you the question. A page containing markers is not published.
• Rule 2: present a summary before building. Before touching the server or creating the first page, AI returns a summary in three parts: what it understood from the document, the decisions it will make where you wrote “you decide”, and the questions that prevent it from proceeding. You confirm or correct it. It does not begin before your confirmation. The same rule applies at the beginning of every phase.
• Rule 3: request confirmation for irreversible actions. Any action that is difficult to undo requires your explicit confirmation at the time it is performed, even if the document already mentions it. This includes deleting files or databases, overwriting an existing installation, changing server configuration, installing system packages and publishing to production. AI describes what it will do, waits for your “yes”, then carries out the action.

Do not invent what you do not know. Write it here as a question. Artificial intelligence proposes a solution, which you then confirm or correct.

As you write the preceding modules, you will encounter questions you do not know how to answer. You might be tempted to write anything so that you do not leave a blank. Do not. An invented answer is built, reviewed, corrected and then rebuilt. An open question is resolved in two minutes of conversation before you begin.

Two rules apply to this module:

• There is no limit to the number of questions. A document with ten honest questions is better than one with no questions but ten invented answers.
• If this module is not empty at the end of the project, something was built without a prior decision. Check it before you consider the website complete.

The appendix: rules to copy without changing

Everything you have written so far belongs to you. You do not need to decide the content that follows. This is the part that allows you to edit your website later from the WordPress dashboard without touching code.

It contains five instructions. Copy them at the end of your document without changing anything.

1. Native blocks

Always build with native WordPress blocks. Do not use custom HTML blocks, CSS embedded in blocks or shortcodes unless I expressly approve it.

2. Colour

Always use the colours from the theme palette, calling them by name (base, contrast, accent-1 to accent-6) and respecting the function assigned to each in this document’s table. Do not write any colour codes in the blocks.

3. Spacing

Margins and internal spacing must come from the theme’s spacing presets. Do not enter measurements manually.

4. Coloured sections

Background bands use the section style variations supplied by the theme, rather than a colour added separately to every group. The theme already manages the contrast between text and background.

5. Typography

Text sizes use their names (small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large). If a size outside this scale is genuinely necessary, use a unit that adapts to the screen, never a fixed number of pixels.

Base, contrast and accent-1 to accent-6 are the internal names under which Twenty Twenty-Five saves the eight colours configured in Global Styles. When artificial intelligence calls them by name, any later change made in Styles automatically applies across the entire website.

The recommended working process

Once the document is ready, the simple part begins. The process is always the same:

• Send the complete instruction document.
• Request the draft of the first page, and only the first page.
• Approve it or correct it.
• AI builds the page.
• Check it on your website, not in the conversation.
• When that page is correct, and only then, request the next one.

Start with the home page. It establishes the tone, spacing and card style. Everything you approve there will be reused on the other pages. A carefully reviewed home page saves you work on the next five pages.

Also check the result on mobile. That is where most of your visitors will arrive and where problems will appear.

Next step

Your website is built. What matters is how you arrived here: you did not delegate everything and hope that the result would be correct; you directed, reviewed and approved the work.

Two settings are still active, and you must not forget them: “coming soon” mode and the box under Settings → Reading that discourages search engines from indexing your website. You will disable both at the end of the journey, when the website is finished. Until then, leave them in place.

What remains is what will make this method useful in the long term: being able to maintain the website yourself. In the next step, you will learn how to edit your website without help, changing a piece of text, a photograph, a colour or an entire section whenever you wish.

Frequently asked questions